


Crossing the Rubicon

by freddiejoey



Category: Arthur of the Britons
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-30
Updated: 2011-08-30
Packaged: 2017-10-23 06:12:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/247093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freddiejoey/pseuds/freddiejoey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kai takes a chance for love........</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crossing the Rubicon

Part One

 

freddiejoeySo, I have crossed the Rubicon, jumped in with both feet, taken the bull by the horns, left the crossroads………..However I express it the outcome is the same – several days ago, when Arthur staged his death under that flying tree branch, I finally let my feelings get the better of me and - I bent and kissed him…….There, it has been admitted aloud and now I am even more terrified. I have no idea what to do or, more importantly, what my little brother is going to do next………

When did I first know how completely I had fallen? The summer that I was eighteen and he was sixteen – and what a summer that was. You see, I wasn't inexperienced with girls – if anything, it was precisely the opposite. For three years or more, I had been happily bedding and teasing where I wanted - with a fair modicum of success. Then suddenly one day, out of nowhere, everything changed. I started not to be able to think properly whenever my brother was near. If I saw Arthur walking around the village or lounging around the longhouse, I had to stop what I was doing and just stare, unable to concentrate. It took a huge effort to pull myself back into the present and not get lost in the simple way he made me lose comprehension of everything, with just one simple glance in my direction. A mixture of intense envy and profound sadness overcame me whenever I saw him conversing happily with someone else.

It was absolutely overwhelming. He was my brother and my best friend and my confidant – including regaling him with my adventures concerning the fairer gender. Now my prick hardened every time he leapt off his horse or we went bathing in the river together or he laughed or indeed he did anything (and how incredibly tricky and daunting that was). I started to ensure that everything was as perfect as possible when I was near him – which of course was every day – so every day, my hair, my clothes, my teeth, my smell had to be flawless. It became increasingly ludicrous.

I tried every which way to overturn what I perceived to be nonsense - a passing aberration that could be conquered by determination and the proper remedies. I bedded eight different bonny girls from the district in one week. I discreetly arranged for one of their pretty sisters to seduce Arthur – his first time. ‘See”, I told myself firmly. “This will dispel all this ridiculous absurdity.” It did exactly nothing.

The next day I was as besotted and as erect and as hopeless as ever. I started to frantically plan how I was going to tell him, letting my mind run through thousands of different ways to confess – but, of course, I never spoke a single solitary word. Arthur ate with me, slept in the bed next to mine, shared a father and a home with me – yet at the same time, he was intangible and untouchable, too far away to grasp. I wanted so much more than to just see him and laugh with him. I wanted to hold and be held by him. I wanted it so badly that it was a constant physical craving, a dull ache of desire in the pit of my stomach.

And so it has continued for several years until now. I don’t know exactly what tipped the balance but something within me finally bent and broke. Perhaps it was the idea that my little brother’s funeral and this burial mound could have been real. Maybe it was the realization that if I never declared myself then I would really never know –even if rejection could mean banishment, from even my father and the longhouse. I vacillated and debated like an old washer woman on the river bank. I lost my appetite and hardly slept. Llud remarked that I looked thin and unwell. Arthur said anxiously that he needed me to be powerful and fit in order to outwit Mark and the others. My head throbbed –and my heart throbbed harder.

In the end I think the decision was made for me. Something (outside? beyond? above?) me decreed that enough was enough. Arthur lay sprawled at my feet, looking like he was the most beautiful, most wonderful, most incomparable person in the world – which he is. One pair of pesky messengers went galloping off to spread the news of his “death” and I knew that a whole troupe of villagers would soon be rushing up to us, primed to play their assigned parts. Softly my hand stroked his cheek – stealthily I bent over him – and then, without warning, my mouth claimed his……..If I amazed myself – and I did – I must have astounded him a thousand times more. His wondrous blue eyes flew open and widened in………what? I can only guess and fear because we simply gazed at each other in bewilderment and a moment later the first of those confounded villagers came thundering up…………..

Now it has been two days since Mark and Dirk, Hereward and Ambrose rode away and I am in a perpetual state of moonblasted madness. Don’t ask me about how I behaved while all those scheming chieftains were lurking here. As if I needed to suddenly prove my manhood (to Arthur? to myself?). I strode around like a ferocious lunatic, swinging my axe at anyone and everyone – calling them all jackals, retorting that I would sooner give the snake back its fangs rather than return their weapons, urging Arthur to kill them outright, inciting him into hand to hand combat with Mark. Then throwing my spears manically at Cerdig’s men in the quagmire. That night at the feasting I drunk myself into a stupor – but not before taking the opportunity to pull Arthur close in brotherly affection and plead that the men should be allowed a greater time to celebrate. If he knew that my whole body was weak with desire, my little brother displayed no outward sign. His blue gaze was serious and steady, as were his words – and then he put himself sensibly to bed.

On the surface life has gone on exactly as before. It is only me who is utterly changed – utterly different. For one thing, I have been scrupulously careful to avoid being alone with Arthur. I have been relentlessly, unnaturally busy elsewhere. Yesterday afternoon, in front of several others in the longhouse, he asked if I would come to the stables with him to look at a limping horse and I almost knocked over the bench in my haste to run out the door on some nonexistent mission involving fence posts. Llud will soon be getting Lenni to prescribe me potions for the berserk. Not to mention the increasingly frequent trips I am making to the privy to either vomit or to beat the abbot. If I keep this up, fairly soon I will be so ethereal that I will just fade away altogether and this dilemma will resolve itself.

 

Part Two

 

I think that I have been so clever, so crafty - and yet I miscalculate badly. While I am wandering around the village, trying to pretend that I know just where I am going and what I am doing, - when I know neither, - Lenni signs that she needs her water bucket filled but is occupied watching a salve on the hearth. Of course I am duped – of course I gladly take the bucket and wander down to the lake. I am bent over, gazing distractedly at my pale reflection, when I see that my image is not the only one rippling among the waterlilies. Stiff with fright (and other causes), I almost drop the bucket, splashing water all over my brother’s boots. Arthur looks faintly amused but all he says is “You’d better get that back to Lenni while it’s still half full. Then you and I are going riding.” It is his best I-am-the-chieftain-and-there-will-no-objections voice. Silently I walk back up the bank to the village, with my brother staying closer to my heels than my own shadow.

I remain silent while the horses are readied and we ride out toward the forest. Arthur makes a few inconsequential remarks but doesn’t seem to be expecting an answer. Then we reach a small clearing and he wheels his horse around and halts – so that I am forced to stop too. He makes a gesture indicating that we should dismount and leaps down. As if I am going to my own public execution I follow. “So.” Very slowly Arthur walks toward me, so that we are only a few feet apart. I keep my eyes downcast, feeling increasingly edgy and increasingly ridiculous. “I think, Kai, that in a little while we might repeat our race back to the village and see who really is first man on horseback - but first, if you will permit, I would like to show you who is the only man in my heart.” And I am still trying to follow the improbable, breathtaking, life-transforming import of his words when his mouth crushes mine.

If ever a kiss can be said to brand your soul……… When I dare to look at him, he is grinning as I have never seen him grin before. I am aware suddenly how my little brother looks – he looks completely happy and at peace. “But how? ….. when? …. why?......” I am stuttering as if my tongue has been cleaved. Arthur continues to smile as if Cerdig’s entire army has just voluntarily laid down its arms – no, even wider than that. “Since the summer I was sixteen. It’s been the most overwhelming, magnificent thing….But I never ever dared hope……..Then when you……while I pretended to play dead…..and for the last few days you’ve been so strange, either frenzied enough to chop up the whole Celtic alliance with your axe or running in the opposite direction away from me.”

Almost tentatively now, he cups my cheek in his hand – but I turn my head and fiercely graze his fingers with my lips. If it was anyone other than Arthur I would be suspicious that his brilliant blue eyes are so bright because they are shining with tears. “And you big brother, since when have you felt….. ?” At last I am smiling too, like an idiot, like a fool, like someone deliriously in love. “At least as long – if not since forever.” And then, as relief, joy, wonder, elation, floods my being, I am laughing uncontrollably because I realize that here is the most nonsensical part…………..

If, right at the beginning, I had had enough courage to simply stride up to him one day and kiss him, during his sixteenth summer, then everything would have been absolutely different. Everything would simply have been heaven – because, he was suffering in exactly the same way. There we were, two absolute geese, lying in sleepless longing, night after night, an arm’s length apart - and so we have remained for four – no closer to five –endlessly farcical years. Outwardly, life may have contiued as usual – battles to fight, girls to bed – me, more often than Arthur but he has done his fair share – treaties to negotiate, alliances to forge, more women, mead and song. But underneath it all – unrequited desire and love that has almost driven us senseless with craving……..

Yet let it never be said that we did not make up for lost time that first miraculous afternoon. Our breeches may have still stayed on - (although they came tumbling off soon enough…….. as in just a few weeks later) - but there is plenty you can accomplish with your lips and your hands and your tongue that does not exactly require a bare cock……… It was really more about saying “I love you” and “You’re mine” and “You’re the most beautiful thing in all the world” ………It was also the first time that he whispered “Kai, my heart” against my ear………

Much, much, later we did repeat our horse race back to the village - and Arthur did indeed trick me and win. Did I deliberately let him best me? Could I, in fact, have won that race? I will never know and I will never care. Because that day I won the greatest prize in creation, the prize which has never abandoned or forsaken me – I won my little brother’s love……


End file.
